


The Cold Feels Eternal

by ladyoneill



Category: Blindspot (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 19:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5468099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyoneill/pseuds/ladyoneill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With Jane and alone, Patterson grieves for David and feels so cold with his loss.  Will she ever feel warm again?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cold Feels Eternal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crescent_gaia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crescent_gaia/gifts).



> Thanks to crescent_gaia who gave me such an open ended challenge with any characters! I incorporated the prompts for going out for drinks/coffee, and got to write my favorite character, Patterson, though Jane plays a large role. I tagged it f/m because it deals with both past Patterson/David and bits of Jane/Weller, but it's mostly gen. A bit angsty but also hopeful. I hope you enjoy it!

"Thanks for meeting me." Hands cupping the large mug of white peppermint mocha, Patterson wishes she could feel warm again. She's been so cold since David died. Nothing helps.

"I'm glad you asked me," Jane softly replies, and Patterson flicks her eyes up, seeing the honesty on her companion's face, before dropping them back to the slowly melting whipped cream in her mug. 

"You don't deserve to be cooped up in that safe house all the time. We should remember that more often."

"You all have busy lives."

It's not an excuse, and her life is sadly not that busy anymore. Her apartment feels empty. Even though they didn't live together, there's too much room now. Too much silence. Patterson shrugs and finally lifts the mug to her lips. The peppermint bites nicely, but the heat of the coffee does nothing to take away the chill inside her.

Looking up again, then away from Jane's earnest face, she spies the handlers standing awkwardly at one of the high tables nearest the door, not drinking their plain black coffees.

They look incredibly out of place, and, as she thinks that, a woman walking past them, swings the baby on her hip to the one farthest from them as she quickens her pace.

Bitter amusement makes Patterson snort.

"What?"

"I think your guards are about thirty seconds away from having the cops called on them."

Jane's lips twitch, then slip down into a frown. "That's my fault. Since I ditched my nighttime detail, all the rest are going overboard to make sure I don't slip away." Her eyes drop to her own cappuccino as one hand taps silently on the table top. Patterson wonders if she knows she's doing it. Jane doesn't have any obvious tells, but restlessness lives on her skin alongside every tattoo.

"It must be hard to live like a prisoner but not be one. I mean, we can't find anything about you. We assume you're one of the good guys and good guys shouldn't be treated like we treat you."

"Except that people in witness protection are all the time."

Patterson nods and takes another sip. "And they chafe at it. If they were all as brave as you, they'd break free from time to time, too."

"I'm not sure that was bravery or stupidity. Weller went with the latter."

A blush rises on Jane's high cheekbones and, not for the first time since they got Jane back, Patterson wonders what there is between Weller and their mystery woman.

They probably need booze to get into that, though.

And, since David, alcohol has been a crutch too many times.

And leaves her even colder.

*****

It's after eleven at night when Patterson gets home from a way too long day at work. Her eyes burn from staring at the most minute details of Jane's tattoos for hours, but she feels a smidgeon of pride for making progress on one of them that led to the team stopping an attack on a private airfield on Long Island.

Closing the door behind her, she flicks on the light switch and sighs heavily when nothing happens. The hall light had been out, but she figured that was the super being lazy. Feeling her way along the wall into her living room, she tries another light switch and, when it fails to go on, realizes the red light on the DVR is off as well as the power strip light across the room where her computer sits.

Great, not only is her apartment empty and lonely, but there's no power and while there's gas heat, the blowers aren't working, so it's colder than normal.

Not that she notices it. She always feels cold these days.

Finding a flashlight stowed on the bookcase for these far too commonplace occurrences, she uses the beam to shuffle into her bedroom. She lights a couple candles, trying to ignore the memory of the last time these were lit, by David, for a romantic evening in, and replaces her work clothes with her flannel pjs and rag wool socks. Still cold, she digs in her closet for a sweater and finds an old, heavy, navy hoodie.

As she takes it off the hanger, her fingers tremble. Bringing it to her face, she breathes deeply and feels tears sting her eyes.

It still smells like David.

Pulling the hoodie over her head, she curls up on her unmade bed, dragging the duvet up to her chin, before letting the tears fall. Her plan to watch dvds until the laptop battery ran out, and eat the melting ice-cream in the freezer is replaced with the grief that won't go away.

*****

Patterson's on her second Cosmo when she gets up the nerve to ask, "What's up with you and Weller?"

The blush on Jane's cheeks is fascinating, and she gulps her beer, before stammering, "Nothing."

"You're a terrible liar," Patterson teases, her fingers plucking an almond from the bowl of mixed nuts on the table in the quiet piano bar around the corner from Jane's safe house. It's between happy hour and the time the after-dinner crowd will arrive, so the place is mostly empty, the pianist just playing whatever comes to mind. The handlers, a much more inconspicuous pair, occupy a table near the door, drinking non-alcoholic beer and ignoring their own bowl of nuts.

Jane rolls her eyes and drains her beer. "Why do you think there's something?"

Because she's seen that look in her own eyes in the mirror. The look Jane gets when Weller gives her one of his rare smiles.

David used to make her eyes light up like that all the time.

As Jane dithers over answering, peeling at the label on her beer bottle, Patterson realizes the perpetual cold she's been living with has faded a bit, the grief has lessened slightly.

She doesn't think about him every minute anymore when she's not consumed with work and the mysteries of Jane's tattoos.

That thought itself makes her ache with cold loneliness.

"Are you okay?" Jane asks gently, reaching over the table and taking her trembling hand.

"Not really," is her honest, sorrowful reply, but she gives her friend a tremulous smile. "But, I'm better."

"I don't know if I've ever gone through what you have, and it's probably different for everyone anyway, but...I wish I knew what to say, what to do."

Patterson squeezes Jane's fingers, then releases her hand and fiddles through the nuts, not really wanting one, but needing something to do with her twitching fingers. "I'm pretty sure there's no one thing to say or do. Just being here...It's good. It helps."

Jane smiles. "I'm glad. You've done so much for me."

"It's not a tit for tat thing, Jane. I like you. We're not just colleagues. I consider you a friend."

The smile widens. "Me, too."

*****

Patterson's digging at the back of her desk drawer for a highlighter when she finds the stack of post-it notes. Fingers clutching around them, heart stuttering in her chest, she pulls them out. Cold flood hers veins, chills her skin, and, for a moment, she closes her eyes, feeling helpless and hopeless. Her fingers tighten around the stack of paper, refusing her silent command to open and drop them, and the sudden need to hide them away again.

But, slowly, Patterson forces her eyes open, her fingers to relax slightly, her mind to acknowledge the existence of the notes.

She knew they existed. She never got rid of one of them. But, like so many painful memories of David, she buried them deep inside, tried to forget.

He used to leave her silly post-it notes all the time. When he had to leave for work before she woke up. While she was in the shower. Tucked into small bouquets of flowers, and attached to the leftover food containers in her fridge. There'd been one on the half-full wine bottle they'd abandoned the first night they'd made love.

Sinking onto her couch, Patterson slowly flips through them, all different colors, all with anagrams and pictographs, puzzles for her to figure out. Her thumb rubs across one that is simply a smiley face, and, while tears gather in the corners of her eyes, she smiles.

For the first time thinking of David since he died, she smiles.

Hours later, she tucks the notes into an envelope, writes his name on the front, and places it into the drawer. Shutting it doesn't seem like shutting the memories of him away anymore.

*****

Jane's sitting on a stool in Patterson's lab, nibbling on a sandwich, frowning at the blown-up image of a tattoo from her left hip. "I don't see it."

"It's subtle." From her own stool, Patterson points it out again, stylus tracing the image, actually two images drawing together. "They're lips, kissing."

"And you think they're mine and Weller's?" Jane's scepticism is mingled with an odd nervousness. Patterson's not surprised to see that blush again on those unearthly cheekbones.

"Okay, he...he kissed me." The blush deepens.

Patterson feels herself grin and she drops the stylus and reaches for Jane's wrist to squeeze it. "Spill, all the details."

"It felt...right?"

Yeah, sometimes it does. She nods in encouragement and Jane slowly lays out the where and when and how it made her feel and how she wants it to happen again, all the while Patterson makes encouraging, happy noises.

She wants her friends to be happy. Jane deserves to be happy.

Long after she's alone in her lab, running test results, it hits Patterson that she deserves to be happy, too.

Closing her eyes for a moment, she sees David, grinning at her, laughing at something she said, and she doesn't feel cold.

She feels warm.

Missing him, always mourning him, but ready to live again.

End


End file.
